Award Snub - Gran Torino received critical acclaim when the American Film Institute named it as one of the ten best films of 2008 and made it onto the top 250 films list on the Internet Movie Database. Number of Academy Award nominations? Zero.

Complete Monster - Spider eventually attempts to kill Thao's family and rapes his sister.

"You ever notice how sometimes you come across somebody you just shouldn't have fucked with? Well, that's me."

"If I have to come back here again its gonna get fucking ugly"

Crowning Moment of Funny - Thao tries to talk like a man and gets a gun pointed at his head for his troubles. The following scene where he puts this training to use counts too.

Thao then going back with advice on complaining about job, girlfriend, car etc. Thao stumbles confusedly (or sarcastically) through it all, culminating with "My ass hurts from all the guys on my construction job."

What about the joke Walt told early on in the film?

Walt: Oh, I've got one. A Mexican, a Jew, and a colored guy go into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, "Get the fuck out of here."

Fridge Brilliance - Walt confesses to the priest, but doesn't talk about his experiences in the war. His true confession comes later, to Thao, after he's locked the kid in the basement. . . through a screen door, evoking the screen between the confessor and the penitent in the confession booth.

Just before the climax,Walt says he "finishes things". A good deal of the scenes in the film show a beginning or middle, but not the end. Thao showing up to work for Walt, Walt's conversation at the bar with the priest, the barbecue, etc.

The first time you watch the movie, you'll probably wonder why Walt is getting a straight shave and is being fitted for a suit. After the end, it makes sense - he's getting cleaned up for his funeral, which he's already planned.

Because he wouldn't trust his family to take care of that properly.

Jerk Sue - Tremendously deconstructed. Walt, who is based off Dirty Harry, has been a Jerk Sue his whole life and has thus driven away anyone who ever cared about him. The purpose of the film has him get over being such an asshole, becoming a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, and finding out that violence just begets more violence, so the peaceful idiots who would be strawmen in earlier Eastwood films were right all along. And he reaches his redemption by basically pulling one Hell of a Thanatos Gambit.